Tag Archives: sex

These groups appear to be helpful to many women. But are they ministering to — or even perpetuating — sexual problems the Christian church has created?

Adelaide Brown (not her real name), 29, had, until recently, a big problem with porn. “I would spend every moment after work enthralled in it and stay up almost all night seeking pleasure and relief,” she says.

Hormones and curiosity raging, she wandered into chat rooms at age 13, where she found adult men to be quite generous with nude photos of themselves. That (which she now realizes was abuse) led to an increasingly ardent search for visual stimulation, which ballooned two years ago into endless sessions on PornTube — and what Brown calls full-on addiction. “I would cancel plans with friends and family just so I could be home alone and soak myself in porn,” she says. “It took away my life.”

When Brown, a single schoolteacher in Seattle who calls herself an “outside the box” Christian, tried to confess to a couple of friends, she found they were more judgmental than supportive. Seeking help from conservative Christian books and porn-addiction recovery Web sites — and there are many — made her feel even more alone. “Everywhere I looked, it was all about men. Finding resources for women was nearly impossible,” she says. “There were people who assured me that I was not alone as a woman but I didn’t believe it. I truly believed I was the only woman struggling with this. That just made me even more ashamed.”

Non-Christian resources didn’t help either. “They didn’t really see anything wrong with porn” in the first place, says Brown, who believes masturbation and sex before marriage are wrong, too. Result: “There wasn’t a lot of help out there for me.”

That was until she found XXXChurch, one of the first conservative Christian ministries for problem porn users, and one of the first to reach out specifically to women. “It was when I finally realized that I was not alone as a woman struggling with porn that I gained the confidence and strength I needed to move forward,” Adelaide says.

As the New York Timesreported earlier this month, more and more porn-recovery workshops are emerging, in church basements and Web sites, to cater specifically to conservative Christian women. (Here and throughout, “Christian,” even without “conservative,” refers to Christian movements often also described as “fundamentalist” or “evangelical.”) While an easy target for secular snickering, this trend actually — narrowly speaking — may constitute a step forward: providing a haven from shame for women like Brown, for whom non-Christian help might not resonate in the first place, and representing a certain collective, overdue, Christian realization that women have sexual agency at all. But are these groups just ministering to — or even perpetuating — sexual problems the Christian church has had a hand in creating?

The notion that Christian women might, gasp, ever peek at porn is still a “Not in OUR church!” newsflash for some. As XXXChurch founder Craig Gross told the Times, “The problem is, most churches have male leadership, and if you want to pitch a [porn recovery event for women], they’ll say, ‘Our women don’t struggle with that.’” Except, of course, they do; that invisibility, as in Brown’s case, just makes the struggle worse.

Why is it that a woman who enjoys casual sex is pegged as “having sex like a man?” The question bugged Jocelyn Wentland, a Masters student in the Department of Family Relations and Human Development at Guelph University. “Even with all of the changes to stereotypes, as a society we continue to view sexual behaviour as belonging to either a man or a woman,” complains Wentland. “Sexual behaviour that doesn’t fit nicely into [the expected behaviour of either gender] gets viewed as ‘out of the norm.’ So women who don’t act like the ‘nice girl’ who only has sex in the context of a committed relationship get pegged as ‘acting like a man.’”

Unfortunately, most of the research on women and sex these days seems to focus on “sexual dysfunction.” There’s little research, says Wentland, on women who actually like sex, and what little there is, is hopelessly out of date and doesn’t reflect what’s actually going on out there. So she did her own.Continue reading →

Sex, Love and Nancy Pelosi ♦ This Day In The USA ♦ Jan 4
by Davis Fleetwood

Sex, love and Nancy Pelosi. Where do they intersect? Good morning scholars, this is this day in the USA for January 4th.

The 110th session of Congress began on January 3rd, 2007 with Democrats controlling both the House and the Senate, wielding more power over the legislative process than an ovulating Brittany Spears in heat would wield over a 16 aspiring Eminem wanna be from Eu Claire Wisconsin if she were to show up at his home coming dance hopped up on a ecstasy-morphine-cannabis cocktail and take her curvaceous ass onto the dance floor and grind in his scrawny lap.

Now that is a lot of influence.

Some may call that sexist.

I would assert that that extended and sexually specific metaphor is necessary to illustrate the level of influence that Democrats had over the course of world events.

And on January 4th, 2007, such female objectifying humor was rendered so 20th century as yet another glass ceiling shattered- and Nancy Pelosi become the most powerful female in US political history by becoming the first female speaker of the house and arguably the most powerful of the influence wielding Democratic party of the USA.

If only the shards from that shattered glass ceiling didn’t cause so much bleeding.

You see, my fellow scholars, the 110th Congress was elected on a referendum against the “War on terror” and against President Bush’s War on the Constitution.

But as the civilian death toll in Iraq approached 1 million and as the constitution suffered the slings and arrows of the outrageous Bush administration, Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic Party chose political expediency over, well, any action at all.

Did Pelosi support a single payer healthcare system that provides healthcare for all?
Did Pelosi oppose the FISA law and the Bush policy of illegal wiretapping?
Did Pelosi support cutting the bloated, wasteful military budget?
Did Pelosi support labor by supporting a unilateral re-writing of NAFTA?
Did Pelosi support the separation of Church and State by eliminating all federal funds from going to faith based charities?
Did Pelosi lead her fellow democrats in voting against the re-authorization of the patriot act?

You can bet your the ashes from your burnt bra that no way in hell did she do any of those things.

This is a woman who famously declared on the all female talk show “THE VIEW” that she would be willing to impeach George Bush if anyone knew of any crimes that he committed.

Torture, spying, lying a nation into war and other high crimes and misdemeanors committed by former President Bush as laid out in the 35 articles of impeachment that were laid out by Dennis Kucinich and silenced by fellow democrat Nancy Pelosi.

Pelosi helped lies travel halfway around the world before the truth could even put its shoes on. Those lies killed innocent people. Those lies have unforeseen blowback attached to them.

And Nancy Pelosi, presented with an unparalleled historical opportunity, did no more to make the women’s movement proud than a coked up pop star shaking her skanky ass to sell some tabloids.

I’m Davis Fleetwood reminding you that history is based on actual events.